Coding multiple games

[Chris]

Anyone making/maintaining/updating several games at once? I wonder how you manage source control and sharing components (I do have problems when near deadline for a next game reset so I have to drop everything and start working on something else, this way I easily lose track which game had the newest version of a certain component, not to mention that sometimes they need customised component to make it more fun ). I assume only one coder involved (glad I have no team, I would never make heads and tails of this then).

For anyone advising "make one game a time", this is unfortunatelly not an option for me

[Scion]

Ill assume your using SVN or some other source version control system...

the next step is to ensure that you allways comment your commits and tag your code versions correctly...

now you can checkout any version of your source...and can track all changes.

depending on how complicated your dependancies are you could either role a manual system that automatically checks out the configured versions of the various components, Personally I use Ant for many of my projects....for checkout, packaging, deployment, etc...anything that I find myself doing on a regular basis I script with ant and then I can relax and know that it will be done correctly everytime (not a given if i did it by hand)

if your dependancies are multi-layered and each cmponent has many published versions then you could look at a dependancy resolution tool. Take a look at Ivy ... http://ant.apache.org/ivy/index.html 

It is directed at java development but you can use it for any dependancy management and the visualisation tools really help when things get hairy.

[codestryke]

4 Games online
1 Game in alpha
1 Game in early dev
1 Game in research mode

I don't use SVN, It's all just in directories and I use a text file in the main directory as a to do list I know my own code, I've pretty much been there and done that and I learn very little when it comes to using PHP or mySQL for the past couple years. At this point it's more about data entry then anything else, I know what to do I just need to type it.

However....

Running the games is another point entirely. Couple years back I needed to create an admin panel for quite a few admin's to run a game of mine (I think at max it was 6 ppl running the game). Basically I took what I had and re coded it from the ground up to be very modular (part of my node engine dream). Node Engine is on hiatus but the modular admin code became the back bone for all the games since then. Lets take my purchase of Galactic-Lords which had a VERY minimal admin panel. It took all of 2-4 hours to plug my admin panel into that system. If it's a game I created and doesn't have a lot of "one off" features it usually only takes an hour or two to plug the system in. That system includes searching by playerid, player, email, ip address or group (call it gang faction whatever). Features Side by side player account viewing, full editing, admin messages, reports, multi-detetion, game news, bug/issue tracker and just about anything else you would need to admin a game. This is by far the #1 reason we can run and maintain multiple games at once without being behind the keyboard all day It also allows me to remember and keep track of my code because the administration is all the same on every game, all the tools are the same it takes very little thought.

Once I get some time I'm writing an article for bbg about how we run our games and will be showing screen shots of our iGoogle like panel that shows all our game statuses as well as one of the admin panels for the game.

[Chris]

Once I get some time I'm writing an article for bbg about how we run our games and will be showing screen shots of our iGoogle like panel that shows all our game statuses as well as one of the admin panels for the game.

I would be interested in these screenshots

[travo]

I want to see it too. I saw you talking about this panl on another thread and thought "I wanna see that"

[Sunchaser]

I am mantaining a game, developing the sequel (now it's suspended), and creating a new one.
I use SVN on (unfuddle.com), but the old game and the new don't have in common the code, so I don't have for now parts shared among them.

Normally you would (or at least - I would), identify which modules will be shared between games
(admin console, forum, chat etc), and put them in the main trunk.

Then I would make a branch for each project where i will manage parts that are particular for that project. If a change or a bug has to be fixed in the common parts, it's committed in the main trunk and then merged on all the branches.